


KEEP THE NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

by spicyshimmy



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-27
Updated: 2011-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-28 06:36:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/304816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyshimmy/pseuds/spicyshimmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Syberfag on her birthday, based on Ademska's <i>Olive Juice</i> line. Hawke has difficulty saying 'I love you, too.' <i>The first time Anders told Hawke he loved him, Hawke asked if Anders wanted a sandwich.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	KEEP THE NARRATIVE STRUCTURE

The first time Anders told Hawke he loved him, Hawke asked if Anders wanted a sandwich.

It was a good sandwich, one of the best Anders had ever had. They’d worked up an appetite together and they even got the chance to eat the post-midnight snack in bed, which was a luxury Anders hadn’t thought to afford in years, crumbs on the pillowcase that Hawke brushed away for the dog to take care of.

‘How romantic,’ Anders said, listening to the mabari slobber along the carpet in its quest for more.

‘The dog takes care of the crumbs and Bodahn takes care of the drool stains,’ Hawke assured him. ‘Ancient dwarven technique—I try not to question it. But there’s poetry in _that_ , isn’t there?’ Then, in a rare moment of rumpled vulnerability, Orlesian mustard at the corner of his mouth, hair shaggy across a deep-grooved wrinkle in his brow, Hawke asked, ‘ _So_ …’ His voice took on a sly tone. Anders’s pulse began to race. ‘…How was it?’

‘Amazing,’ Anders replied. He didn’t mean the sandwich. He didn’t think Hawke meant the sandwich, either—tenderness that seized Anders’s heart like a crushing prison, a spell that went somewhat deeper than Hawke’s usual grease traps.

‘I _know_.’ Hawke sighed. When he shut his eyes, his lashes were thick and dark, all the laugh-lines easing at the corners. ‘…And everyone who’s ever had one says the _exact_ same thing. It’s the ratio of cheese to meat, Anders—that’s my secret.’

‘Mm,’ Anders said, and rolled over for the night.

*

The second time Anders told Hawke he loved him, Hawke almost said it too.

‘Pardon?’ Anders asked, over the crash from the study, Sandal and Bodahn cleaning up and not cleaning up by equal measure. There was something about that, neither metaphor nor irony but predictability—the idea that people made things worse whenever they tried to make things better, no matter who they were or what they were supposed to be fixing. ‘I don’t think I quite heard…’

‘Olive juice,’ Hawke repeated, louder this time. ‘Imported from Tevinter—entirely illegal, ludicrously expensive—but Isabela says it does wonders for the skin, and Varric keeps telling people I’m getting all wrinkly. What do you think, Anders? _Am_ I getting all wrinkly?’

Hawke leaned in close and poked at the furrow in his brow, the one Anders had smoothed out with rough kisses in the bed they shared—even if it was only for a few hours at a time, Anders still liked to think of it as _theirs_. It was the dog’s sometimes, Justice’s others, Bodahn’s when he made it, but theirs primarily, with cozy pillows indented from Hawke’s familiar sprawl.

Where his knees rested; where his elbow bent; where Anders leached warmth from his body, curling too close during the night.

And the other things—the tangle of sheets, the sweat in the dip of the chest, a loose lace torn from trousers or one of Hawke’s missing greaves forgotten on the mattress; a grunt, a noise of pain, and the offending item chucked across the room, hitting the wall a moment later.

With Hawke, it was always an adventure.

‘Olive juice,’ Anders said, voice rising on disbelief.

‘Maker bless you,’ Hawke replied.

*

‘I love u…niting the mages with you, Anders,’ Hawke said unprompted, one night when the moon was high and full and the air was almost clear.

Then, when the winds changed, it wasn’t. Smog blew in from Lowtown and Fenris scraped something that might have been human shit off the bottom of his foot; Isabela threw her dagger and caught it again one-handed until she’d perfected a triple-flip, holding it pommel to fingers and caressing the leather strappings much the same way Varric caressed Bianca—or the way Hawke had caressed Varric’s chest hair a few weeks back, during an all-too predictable Wednesday night at the Hanged Man.

 _I love you, Varric_ , Hawke had said at the time, _you incorrigibly attractive dwarf you_ , and Varric gave Anders a look, and Anders gave Varric a look—and then they’d both helped Hawke stumble home, because one and a half people was the exact number necessary for the job.

After they’d tucked him in Varric tiptoed out lighter than a baby nug, drawing a heart on the air with his forefingers, closing the door behind him.

It might have been cute—if Hawke had mumbled _I love you, Anders, you painfully wonderful apostate you_ after, once they were alone.

But he didn’t.

Even while inebriated, Hawke still knew better.

‘Now you tell me I always know exactly what to say,’ Hawke added, eyes bright, more golden than the moon with its cover of foundry smoke obscuring each wink and glitter. His teeth were white against his beard and there was no mustard at the corner of his mouth; instead Anders saw the flash of a grin, the echoes of a secret, shadow and bristle together and soft skin Anders was familiar with by taste. ‘Wasn’t that the perfect romantic moment? You’ve been rendered speechless, I see.’

‘Pfaugh,’ Fenris said.

‘Too many clothes still on,’ Isabela added.

‘Not in front of the children, Hawke,’ Anders murmured.

When the mercenaries leaped upon them from the rooftops, it was just the distraction they needed.

*

‘I can’t take it anymore, Varric,’ Anders said while Varric stoked the hearth with an antique poker—something they’d picked up in an ancient thaig a few years back, just one of too many mementos they kept from the Deep Roads.

It was no sweet confession—no _I love you_ against Hawke’s temple while they both lay there catching their breath again, all sweaty chests and grasping fingers—but it had the same mournful hook, Anders rubbing the stubble on his jaw and Varric pacing in front of the fire, shadow cast three times as long as any other, more normal dwarf. 

‘Seriously?’ Varric asked. ‘You spend years in a hole-in-the-wall clinic in Darktown with Fereldan refugees bleeding all over you and the spirit of Justice inside your head, and a little _reticence_ is what makes you crack?’

‘I try not to be predictable,’ Anders replied.

The silence that followed was companionable—if only because it wasn’t really silence, the thump of Varric’s bootfalls against the carpet and the scritch of scratchy hair at Anders’s chin, the rustle of feathers every time he sighed and the puff of air every time Varric did the same. It went back and forth like dwarven clockwork, like Varric across the room.

‘Look, Blondie,’ he said at last, ‘the thing you’ve gotta understand is: Hawke gets it.’

‘Well of course he does,’ Anders replied. ‘Because I keep _telling_ him. Varric, that isn’t the problem here. Were you even listening to me before?’

‘I mean he _gets_ it.’ Varric finally stopped pacing but somehow the stillness only made things worse. ‘Hawke knows what every good storyteller does, though maybe for different reasons.’

‘And that is?’ Anders asked.

Varric flicked at one of his earrings with his thumb. ‘That you can’t ever say _I love you, too_ and hope to keep the narrative structure. It’s gotta be something different every time.’

‘If you understand him so well, perhaps _you_ should move in with him,’ Anders said.

‘Too bad that’s exactly how it _doesn’t_ work,’ Varric replied—and Anders spent the rest of the night wondering how it was certain dwarves could be _so_ unhelpful and _so_ wonderful in just one sentence.

*

‘You could take more clothes off,’ Isabela suggested.

 _We do that more often than you think_ , Anders considered mentioning.

‘Pfaugh,’ Fenris said, as though he _had_ mentioned it; Merrill assumed she’d missed something even though she probably hadn’t—and Varric gave Anders a meaningful look from all the way across the table.

‘Just remember the narrative structure,’ he said.

‘…And then take more clothes off,’ Isabela agreed.

*

‘I love you,’ Hawke said later that night, a heap of worn-out muscle, as languid as he was tense, propped up on one elbow with his eyes keener than the lone shaft of moonlight splitting in through the canopy.

‘And I love uniting the mages with you too, Hawke,’ Anders replied, on a happy sigh between two kisses.

 **END**


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